Movie Review Tankhouse

Tankhouse

Directed by Noam Tomaschoff

Written by Noam Tomaschoff, Chelsea Frei

Starring Tara Holt, Richard Kind, Stephen Friedrich, Christopher Lloyd

Released May 9th, 2022

Tankhouse is a comic romp within the weird world of grown up theater kids. The film stars Stephen Friedrich as Tucker and Tara Holt as his lover and muse, Sandrene. Together the couple hopes to change theater presentation forever with their immersive style of drama. Things get off to a good start but go bad very quickly. During their very first immersive theater presentation, a member of the very small audience dies. The woman was very old and seemed to happily participate in the immersive experience but regardless, her death gets Tucker and Sandrene blackballed from New York Theater by Tucker’s beloved mentor, Buford (Christopher Lloyd). 

Though Buford is behind getting Tucker and Sandrene tossed out of the theater world, he nevertheless is able to offer Tucker advice. He tells him to go out into the world and find out what theater really means to him. Buford relates a story, re-told in a delightfully strange animated segment, about how he taught theater in the jungles of Siberia. If you know why that’s funny, then you know. I’m not going to explain it. Tucker needs to go out into the world and find his Siberian jungle.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review Who Framed Roger Rabbit?

Who Framed Roger Rabbit? 

Directed by Robert Zemeckis

Written by Jeffrey Price, Peter S. Seaman

Starring Bob Hoskins, Kathleen Turner, Charles Fleischer, Christopher Lloyd

Released June 22nd, 1988 

Detective Eddie Valiant (Bob Hoskins) stands framed by a tunnel leading him to a physical and emotional destination. On the other side of the tunnel is the place where he needs to go to save his new friend, Roger, but it is also the place where, years earlier, his brother and partner was killed. The conflict weighs heavily on him as he ponders his fate, past and present colliding in a whirlwind of emotions.

I could be describing a 1940’s detective movie directed by John Huston or Jules Dassin with a story by Daschiell Hammett and starring Gene Tierney or Robert Mitchum. Instead, the movie I am describing in the opening of this review is Who Framed Roger Rabbit, the iconic live action-animated feature from visionary director Robert Zemeckis. The comedy comes from the remarkably brilliant clash of animated storytelling and Zemeckis' love of classic detective stories.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media, linked here. 

Classic Movie Review One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest

One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest (1975)

Directed by Milos Forman

Written by Lawrence Hauben, Bo Goldman 

Starring Jack Nicholson, Louise Fletcher, William Redfield, Danny Devito, Christopher Lloyd 

Release Date November 19th, 1975 

This week’s classic, (August 13th, 2017) on the I Hate Critics Movie Review podcast was One Flew Over The Cuckoo’s Nest, Milos Forman’s remarkable Best Picture winning triumph. It’s been years since I had sat down to watch this remarkable film and I was surprised at just how powerful the film remains. The story of patients in a mental ward whose lives are upended when they meet Jack Nicholson’s firebrand, criminally insane, R.P McMurphy, is truly unlike any film of its era.

R.P McMurphy is a dangerous man, a volatile personality. McMurphy’s reputation as a stirrer of the proverbial pot seems ill-suited from the very beginning for Nurse Ratched’s (Louise Fletcher) orderly, scheduled, and heavily medicated psych ward. In fact, on McMurphy’s very first day we get signs of things to come as he mugs his way about stirring up his fellow patients with his antics. It seems certain from our perspective in the audience that McMurphy is going to be trouble, the only question is how much trouble.

In a typical movie, the story would be McMurphy’s antics but director Milos Forman establishes throughout One Flew Over the Cuckoo's Nest that as entertaining as McMurphy is in the performance of the glorious Jack Nicholson, at the height of his charismatic powers, this isn’t a typical movie. We may delight at times in McMurphy’s antics, his escape attempts, his pot stirring, et cetera, but the movie is only here to observe a day to day progression of McMurphy, the patients around him and the staff of the hospital.

Find my full length review at Geeks.Media